28 February 2014

We had our third annual Fine Arts Night on Tuesday, and every year I psych myself out and stress my self out before the big event!

It went great! It was the first time in three years that I really felt that parents genuinely wanted to know what their kids had been up to, and where their kid's art was! Great feeling for me, the teacher.

26 February 2014

I must have had this saved in my draft box at least 2 months now, wanting to talk about it, but then again asking my self why bother? Blogging has really really become almost a thing of the past. Most bloggers hardly blog anymore, and those who read it DONT take any time to comment. Seriously. Check out comments from years ago on my older posts, to now. And it's not just my blog. Some other high traffic blogs are experiencing the same decline. Anyhow, where were we? Oh yeah, the post where I talk about how Mister Wonderful and I have been at this trying to make a baby business for a year now, and NOTHING has happened.

I think we started off like most couples do, you quit the birth control and fall into the "lets just see what happens" category. That was a year ago this February. Around July of 2013, we began buying ovulation kits to know when I was and wasn't ovulating. Who knew that you seriously have like a 48 hour window to get pregnant. Seriously that's it folks! All about that timing of that egg being released I suppose! In December of 2013 I was given Clomid, in hopes to make me ovulate sooner in my cycle. I for some reason would ovulate then seriously 4 days later get my period. For any of you newbies out there, this means I had to short of a window to get pregnant. Not enough time for the whole attaching to the uterus lining thing. Here we are now in Feb 2014, and nothing still has happened. I've been told by my doc that I'm healthy--the right weight, I'm active I don't smoke, don't drink get lots of sleep. I ovulate so what's the deal? I'm suppose to complete one more round of Clomid before they want to do a dye test on my tubes to see if there is any blockage. Has anyone else gone through all these hoops? Any success or failures? Hubs is 33 I'm 31 and hence why so much "effort" has gone into trying in the past year. We aren't old at all to have a kid, but once 38 hits, it's much harder to have a healthy baby.

20 February 2014

I have to admit that figure skating in the winter olympics is my favorite event to watch. Here are the winning performances dating back to 1988! These are some fantastic Medalists every bit deserving of their medals! Who can forget all the Nancy Kerrigan Tonya Harding drama either! Or Surya Bonaly and her infamous sass attitude and backflip on ice.

Surya Bonaly was infamous for (among other things) doing aone blade backflip in the 1998 Olympics, and is the ONLY figure skater who’s ever pulled that off. Not just the only woman, the only figure skater PERIOD. There’s like all ofthree Olympic-class male skaters who did backflips in their routines, and NONE of them could do it one blade.But wait, there’s more.

Backflips were banned from the 1976 Olympics onward on the official justification that skating jumps are supposed to be landed on one blade, whereas backflips are landed on both blades. The unofficial justification was it was too dangerous, both to the athlete and to the rink — if you didn’t land it perfectly, you could not only break your ankle, but also punch THROUGH the ice surface.

Surya Bonaly was openly contemptuous of the figure skating judges, because they were a bunch of openly racist white men who always screwed her over by giving her lower scores than she deserved. That one-blade backflip was her ultimate Eff YOU! to the Olympics judges, because she took an “illegal” backflip and made it legal by landing it on one blade. Pretty much DARING them to mark her down for being epic awesome and pulling a move that their precious coddled white girls didn’t have the guts to even think about.

They did, of course.

Not only did she do the backflip and land, she landed then went right into a triple loop. Wow! I have to admit, when I was younger, Tara Lipinski's performance was one of my all time favorites along with Sarah Hughes. Top notch skating in my book!

1988 Calgary Katerina Witt

1992 Albertville, France

1994 Oksana Baiul Lillehammer

1998 Tara Lipinski Nagano

Sarah Hughes performance 2002 Salt Lake City, Utah

Shizuka Arakawa "torino 2006

2010 Vancouver Kim YunaWho will the winner be for the ladies tonight? I will have to post the winner tomorrow!

19 February 2014

Do you ever stumble upon a photograph that really speaks to you? Even moves you? I found these recently on the web and just thought WOW! The photographers did such an amazing job capturing that moment! These types of photos are what would of been a source of inspiration had the internet been more of a "source" back in college.

This photo just blows me away. The contrast between black and white the details of her goosebumps...I could go on and on!

Underwater photography is such a mystery to me! I don't know ow they capture such great pics or what types of cameras have these capabilities!

Night photography. Super hard to get just right. It's all about exposure. Something I studied a lot in college but haven't really messed with since.

Pops of color.

Sally Mann and Elliot Erwitt are two of my favorite photographers. I've written two college papers on both of them and why they inspire me so much.

05 February 2014

I've touched on Disney movies a lot in the past several years I've been a blogger.The first disney movie I saw in the theater was Sleeping Beauty. Now mind you, it was released to theaters in 1959, so when I say in theaters, it was in the theater for a limited time. How they often show older movies in theaters even though it's not a new release.

Sleeping Beauty turns 55 this year! Amazing that it's been around that long! Did you know...

1. Versions of Sleeping Beauty have been published by both Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. Perrault called his heroine Aurora, while the Grimms' "Little Briar Rose" referred to their princess as, well, Briar Rose. Disney split the difference and used both names.

2. Prince Phillip is said to have been named after another royal that Americans would have been familiar with during that time period: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. They had only been married for 12 years at the time Sleeping Beauty was released, and she had been Queen for just seven.

3. Instead of three quirky fairies, the original version included seven, as in Perrault's story. (Other versions include up to 13, making the evil fairy the unlucky addition.) The gifts the seven fairies bestowed in Perrault's tale were beauty, wit, grace, dance, song, and music. In Disney's Sleeping Beauty, this was truncated to beauty and song.

4. Mary Costa, the voice of Sleeping Beauty, is a professional opera singer and has performed in more than 40 operatic roles on stage. She sang at a memorial service for John F. Kennedy at the request of Jackie Kennedy after Jackie heard her sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Academy Awards. Here she is with Bing Crosby in 1971.

Here's some rare footage of her singing with Bing on youtube

5. Costa is originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, and her southern accent almost prevented her from getting the job. Animator Marc Davis said that after some deliberation, the team decided that if an Englishwoman like Vivien Leigh could pull off a southern accent for Gone with the Wind, a southern girl could sustain an English accent for Sleeping Beauty.

6. Though Mary Costa provided the voice for Aurora, Helene Stanley was the live action reference. She also served as the reference for Cinderella and Anita from 101 Dalmatians. Here she is providing movements and expressions for the animators on the Disneyland TV show.

This scene where the artists are drawing Aurora blows me away. Such raw talent! :)

7. So now you know that Helene Stanley provided the live-action model and Mary Costa provided the voice—but there was at least one other inspiration for Princess Aurora’s features and body type: Audrey Hepburn.

8. When the fairies discuss how to help the king and queen early on in the film, Merryweather makes cookies in the shape of a classic Mickey Mouse head.

9. Although it’s a classic now, Sleeping Beauty was not a darling at the time. Critics thought the movie moved slowly and lacked character development.

10. In fact, Sleeping Beauty was such a box office bomb (at least, compared to the cost of production) that the company decided that princess movies weren’t exactly the wave of the future. They didn’t make another princess movie until 30 years later, when The Little Mermaidwas released in 1989.

11. Another reason it took six years to bring Princess Aurora and friends to life was that Walt was kinda sidetracked with another project at the time: Disneyland. The castle there was originally supposed to be named after the original Disney princess, Snow White, but in order to promote the film, Imagineers changed it to Sleeping Beauty Castle.

12. The fairytale book that opens the movie was real and was entirely handpainted by Eyvind Earle, the man responsible for the entire look and feel of the movie. It was restored in 2008and is now part of the Disney Archives, where it is sometimes put on display at events.

13. Walt worried about the constant comparisons to Snow White and Cinderella, so he worked with Earle to come up with the stylized, angular Sleeping Beauty look, which was very painstaking and time consuming. “That’s why it took us six years and $6 million to makeSleeping Beauty. But to us, it was worth it,” Walt once said. Earle also worked on Peter Panand Lady and the Tramp, among others.

And here's another fun video I found that helps show how many different characters but same person was used to voice Disney's finest parts! I had no idea that Cinderella's evil step mom was the same voice as Malificent in Sleeping Beauty, did you?

04 February 2014

A friend of mine shared this on facebook, and I had to repost it. For anyone like myself, I actually take great pride in the fact that I can wear an XS size T shirt bec my boobs do not get in the way! :)

1. Not having boobs means not having to wear a bra. Seriously, no one will ever know. It’s glorious.

2. If your bathing suit falls off in the ocean, it won’t cause a scene. Literally everyone will just be like “Look at that cute little boy with the long hair! He’s adorable.” No embarrassment. Well…maybe a little.

3. You’ve likely had to make up for your lack of cleavage with something else. Maybe you have great hair, maybe you’re really talented at doing your makeup, or maybe you’re super flexible. Whatever it is, it’s awesome. Good for you, you over-compensator.

4. You never have to go up a shirt size because of your boobs. That counts for a lot.

5. Bandeaus are your friend. This is a win.

6. The right bra, well placed bronzer, and a good pair of chicken cutlets have turned you into Houdini. Now you don’t see them? Now you do.

7. Back pain? You don’t have it.

8. It’s likely that you have a great ass because things have to even out somehow.

9. You will never, ever, ever have to worry about sagging. Ever.

10. Running isn’t painful. Neither is walking. Or even standing for that matter. Your life is smooth sailing. Literally. You have no bumps.

11. You’re a member of the prestigious IBTC, whose members proudly include Kate Hudson, Cameron Diaz, Emma Watson, and Justin Bieber.

12. You know what’s pretty about old lady boobs? Nothing. Thankfully, yours will look like a teeny bopper’s forever.

13. Sports bras don’t feel like a straight jacket. In all seriousness, you could probably run a marathon without one and be perfectly fine.

14. Reductions sound painful. And also expensive. Lucky for you, you can spend those pennies on wine, not surgery.

15. Backless tops are never an issue, and you don’t even have to mess with sticky tape! Praise the Lord.

16. You don’t spend a lot of money on undergarments. Training bras are like $7.

17. You’ve never been like “Oh man, my boobs are really painful right now.” You know why? Because you don’t have any.

03 February 2014

First and foremost, other than the superbowl being everything but exciting since it was a blowout of a game, I thought hey well at least the commercials will rock! Um, no. There were 2 commericals that were decent and that was it! I was so bummed!

Which brings me to this one.

My husband and I, were both slightly offended. America The Beautiful was written in 1893 by Katherine Lee Bates, a Wellesley College instructor, after an inspirational trip to the peak of Pikes Peak (in Colorado). Her poem was first published in a weekly journal, The Congregationalist, on the 4th of July, 1895. However, Ms. Bates continued to revise the poem until 1913.

So let's throw back here. 1893. The music was written by Samuel Ward for a hymn of his own. Bates wrote the first draft of the poem in 1893, when she was teaching in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She wrote another version in 1904 and the final version in 1913.

Folks, the fact of the matter is, we are AMERICA which the founding language (LIKE IT OR NOT) is ENGLISH. We are not Germany where you'd expect to hear their country's song in GERMAN if it was being played on the television.

“If we cannot be proud enough as a country to sing 'American the Beautiful' in English in a commercial during the Super Bowl, by a company as American as they come — doggone we are on the road to perdition" -GOP Allen West

I even tweeted to Coca Cola! I said this: "Hey Coke, get your shit together. This is Merica, we sing in English. Get right or get out." As it seemed many others on twitter agreed whole heartedly!

Were you offended? Yes, I am well aware of the mumbo jumbo garbage about America being a melting pot of people etc etc but that doesn't change the bottom line of whom or which we were founded upon, including our native language!!! Just saying!

*all facts about the song america the beautiful were found via google! :)And can I just say I utterly enjoyed the mini concert? Bruno KILLED IT!

He kept it classy and was fully dressed the entire time! He totally showcased that your talent can always speak for it's self without having less clothes on! :)